An online commonplace book
One of the best parts of doing Four Panel Friday each week is discovering new cartoonists.
Today, Erik Nebel steps to the drafting table. He’s currently at work “on a bunch of comics projects”.
What will he conjure up?
From: Comics: Easy as ABC! The Essential Guide to Comics for Kids
By: Ivan Brunetti
Davide Bart Salvemini is an Italian cartoonist based in Bologna. He describes his style as Psicheledelico.
The clouds shifting positions and changing shapes between panels helps indicate time passing.
With only four panels, each line needs to move the story forward.
From: Comics: Easy as ABC! The Essential Guide to Comics for Kids
By: Ivan Brunetti
Up this week is cartoonist Alex Schubert. Alex’s strips were regularly featured in Vice.
Here Alex demonstrates how simple shapes, spread across four panels, can tell a story.
From: Comics: Easy as ABC! The Essential Guide to Comics for Kids
By: Ivan Brunetti
Mark Laliberte comes up with a bright idea. Perfect fodder for Four Panel Friday.
Read more 4 Panel delights at Mark’s site – The 4PANEL Project.
From: Comics: Easy as ABC! The Essential Guide to Comics for Kids
By: Ivan Brunetti
With my comics tucked away in storage I relied on happenstance for this weeks post. I was flipping through Austin Kleon’s book – Keep Going, and then POW! Mission accomplished.
Kleon doesn’t consider himself a cartoonist but he’s drawn and posted so many of these he’s becoming dangerously close.
An incredible toilet read, Keep Going is definitely a must purchase.
From: Keep Going – 10 Ways to Stay Creative In Good Times and Bad
By: Austin Kleon
Ok. These aren’t exactly comic panels.
But the more I go through old books during this time spent at home, the more I discover “four panels” in other parts of literature.
Tolkien’s perspective and line variation are impressive. He incorporates straight lines, diagonal and curved lines, stipples, blacked out inks.
The man was non-stop.
I remember this All Star Squadron issue being a Justice League comic. Turns out it’s the Justice Society.
Justice who? What kind of bench warming Justice League is this?
Hold up. Learn your comics history J.
The Justice Society was the first superhero team to ever appear in D.C. Comics.
They’re the godfather and godmothers of the superhero team-up game. Respect due.
From: All Star Squadron #28
By: Roy Thomas, Richard Howell, and Gerald Forton
Two stories in 4 panels.
Betty approaching, and then turning away from Archie is a story on its own.
From: Archie #1
By: Mark Waid and Fiona Staples
Small details can set the tone of a page.
Here, Kean Soo melds the speech balloons into the gutters. A subtle but distinct use of the convention, one I’ve never seen before.
From: Flight, Volume Two
By: Kean Soo
“Roughs” from Jeff Smith’s Bone. Probably the most polished roughs in history.
As a kid, catching a glimpse of a cartoonist’s rough pages provided endless inspiration and encouragement.
My mind melted when I discovered perfect panels didn’t immediately flow from the brushes of master cartoonists.
From: The Art of Bone
By: Jeff Smith
Floodlights and Goalposts 